Our Rights from God or Compromise? CNN Decides

In a rare public display of candor by a liberal icon, CNN host Chris Cuomo blurted out – during a heated exchange with Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on the issue of gay marriage, the Constitution and state’s rights – that “Our rights do not come from God”… “They come from man”…“from collective agreement and compromise.”

Cuomo was silent on how the people would reach “collective agreements” and who would negotiate “compromises” but one can assume that he would be among the elites involved by virtue of credentials as liberal news media icon.

Cuomo, who is a lawyer in addition to being a “journalist”, should know that the Founders held God and the role He plays in the human condition in high esteem considering they began the great American experiment with these words found in the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Too late to take it back though. The ideologically leftist cat was out of the progressive bag. In an article published in last Friday’s edition of The New American, Selwyn Duke writes that:

Cuomo “seems to be confusing ‘laws’ with ‘rights’ . . . If our rights are from God, they exist apart from governmental laws, which man does create . . . These rights are secured by government via the creation and enforcement of just law” . . . “Why did the Founders emphasize rights’ divine origin? Because He (or he) who giveth can also taketh away.

“The same is true of marriage…the long-held position in Christendom . . . that a man and woman were joined in matrimony by God…Once we began to believe marriage was a human creation . . . divorce become easy and marriage is redefined.

This may be why same-sex marriage opponents cite the First Amendment as the law that informs their position on marriage. The amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

So when federal courts – an equal branch of government that must operate within the four corners of the Constitution – decide to trump state law or the will of the People expressed at the ballot box through referendums and state constitutional amendments, the People might come to the conclusion that the courts do so without the consent of the governed.

In light of this, some say that Chris Cuomo, who owes his livelihood as CNN Anchor to the freedom of press clause of First Amendment, might want to revisit the issue of rights bestowed on him by God not man.